Jon Moxley — known as Dean Ambrose during his time in WWE — set the pro wrestling world on fire when he appeared at All Elite Wrestling's Double or Nothing on May 25 and attacked Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega.
Moxley further lit the flames when he went on the “Talk is Jericho” podcast on Wednesday and expressed his frustrations over his time in WWE and what led to him signing a multi-year deal with AEW.
Things looked to be settling down until Moxley did a two-part series on The Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast that came out on Friday and Sunday.
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It was during part two in which Moxley discussed working a "Street Fight" at WrestleMania 32 in 2016 with Brock Lesnar. The bout was critically regarded as one of the worst on the show. When the match was first on the horizon, Moxley expressed optimism since their past interactions went rather well. But he said he quickly found out that he was the only person trying to make the fight a "WrestleMania moment" to remember, both Lesnar and WWE weren't as interested.
"I think he thought he was just doing me a favor, me being in the ring with him was enough to like do awesome things for me," Moxley said of Lesnar. "I think that’s what he thought. He didn’t want to be there, I mean he just put in the — and then the week leading up, I’m like — because this thing is a Street Fight, it’s not a match you can just call in the ring. It’s a Street Fight at WrestleMania, so we’ve gotta get stunts approved and set up, we’ve gotta get props for table bumps or whatever we’re gonna do. I pitched all this stuff to everybody, all the producers and I feel like I’m just getting ignored."
And he claims to have felt much of the same lack of energy from WWE.
"Because our match wasn’t important to any of the producers or writers, or Vince [McMahon], they just gave me enough to give me the match, but they didn’t give me any help to make it a good angle or like, make it a hotter thing people want to see," he continued. "And [I’m like] ‘Can we do this? Can we do this? Can we, all these different stunts and stuff.’ Like, I’m ready to die in the ring. I’m ready to take the worst — I’m not trying to put Brock through abuse. I’m trying to take the worst beating in the history of the world. I’m ready to be ... if he kills me? Great, I’ll go down as a legend. I was ready to do ANYTHING. But in the weeks leading up, the angle was not good, Brock’s not even there half the time, we don’t do anything interesting."
Moxley recalls how it only got progressively worse, adding moments later that "Brock hasn’t even heard any of my ideas, because he doesn’t care, hasn’t been around" and "I had all these crazy ideas of cool stuff, but nobody wanted to put any effort into it except me."
The situation got even worse for Moxley on the day of WrestleMania itself. While the 33-year-old was still holding out hope for a memorable match because he was willing to do anything and everything to make the match spectacular, he felt like Lesnar and WWE couldn't have cared less about the bout and just wanted to get through it and move on from the man formerly known as Dean Ambrose.
“So day of the show, I get there at like 11 AM. [Lesnar] doesn’t show up until like 3:00. We haven’t talked about any of this match. 3:00, show starts at 5, we’re like fourth." Moxley said, his voice getting more tense. "Start talking about stuff, he’s just walking away, talking to other people. He’s not really interested, doesn’t want to be there. And this is the most important match of my life. I’m like, everybody at WrestleMania wants to show up and steal the show. There are people on the show that night that I know were literally rehearsing their match for a month at like the Performance Center.
"Because you should show up at WrestleMania to want to f—g steal the show," Moxley continued. "And I was like, ‘Dude, we have the opportunity, we have a Street Fight. We can do anything. I’ll take any bump you want! Literally I’m begging you to f—g choke me. Please, powerbomb me into thumb tacks a hundred times.' ‘Oh, we don’t need all that.’ Like, he did not have the mentality of trying to steal the show at all. Did not give a s—."
And Moxley said the talk between he and Lesnar didn't get much further than that when they finally started speaking just a couple of matches before the start of their fight.
“So we’re finally talking, we start talking about the match in earnest the first time, while the second match is going on," Moxley said. "And we’re fourth. And then we don’t have a finish! And I’m like, 'He doesn’t want me to kick out of multiple F5s, and at WrestleMania everybody kicks out of like five F5s because he only does Germans and F5s.'
"And I’m throwing stuff out there at the last minute, stuff that’s coming to my head. I’m like, ‘What if you f—g like run head-first into a chair and you back up into me and I put you into a German or something?’ He’s like, ‘No,'" Moxley recalled in frustration. "By the end, I’m throwing out every f—g stupid idea, you know? So we put together a little f—g sequence of dumb f—g ... we put together a finish of like, 'Maybe I’ll grab the barbed wire and duck it, and throw me into a pile of chairs,' which was not even that good. That’s a brawl, that’s not WrestleMania.
"And I built it up in media like, ‘Yo, this is gonna be nuts.’ I was banging my head against the wall screaming at everybody for weeks it felt like, and it felt like I was invisible. Main reason was, I wasn’t the most important match on the show. I was basically non-important at all. As long as Brock’s on the show, Brock’s good. Other matches were more important, whatever match was on the show that night. It was just, they didn’t give a s—.”
